Follower of a Cause
by Sebe
Summary: Meg POV post-finale, so spoilers. Meg's in a tough spot with the demon re-taking of the food chain, but there's still one Winchester topside and he doesn't really have a lot of options of where to look for allies. Some powers!Sam.


Author's Notes: Sooo, post finale, Sam's gonna be desperate and pissed and I'm wondering if, after everyone and everything tells him Dean and Cas can't be reached and he knows he's _completely_ alone, we're gonna see some power-usage. Sam being alone is not ever a good thing for his stability or the world's safety and Crowley's words to him really hammered that home. Sam being alone has gotta be the catalyst for something coming up in Season 8, yes? It won't be anything huge or obvious like this little ficlet of prediction, but I'm really hoping we at least get some small explosions or visions or something.

Meg said she needed a cause to follow. Azazel, Lucifer, always someone with a mission. Who has a clearer mission and is willing to do more to complete it than one Winchester seeking to save the other?

Summary: Meg POV post-finale, so spoilers. Meg's in a tough spot with the demon re-taking of the food chain, but there's still one Winchester topside and he doesn't really have a lot of options of where to look for allies. Sam had always been the forgiving sort, especially when he was desperate.

**Follower of a Cause**

Meg figures they've had her about a week. After the Leviathan's were knocked off balance with the demise of their leader, demons and monsters they'd been screwing over were quick to clean up the scraps left behind.

Meg smirked as she remembered the genuinely shocked looks on the Leviathan's faces right before she'd seen a couple demons start carving them up. They were really shocked, like legitimately. Their own fault for being out of the loop for so long off in Purgatory, they hadn't gotten the memo passed around the underworld: Yes, they're only humans, but do try to stay clear of the Winchesters. Because whatever they went after, they usually got.

Unless it was personal happiness and fulfillment. Meg had to grin a little. Those two may save the world on a fairly regular basis, but they could never catch a break. The universe waited in line to kick them when they were down. No one understood that kind of cruelty better than a demon.

A heavy boot caught her in the cheek and her head snapped back. She glared darkly at the other demon, clearly unruffled.

"What do you have to be smiling about, traitor?" He sneered at her, eyes turning black. "Boss is gonna kill you real slow once we get back down under, you know."

"And where is the King of Dicks anyway? Been a week. I'm getting bored." She lounged back against the wall casually, one leg crossed over the other, bouncing her foot. The demon seethed, but didn't advance. Clearly, Crowley had told them to do minimal damage, no doubt wanting the nasty bits for himself. Plus, the little coward probably didn't want to risk getting accidentally caught in the Devil's Trap that held her. Dirty pool to trap another demon, but playing fair wasn't in the rulebook they passed out in the Pit, much the opposite, actually.

"Lots of cleanup business to handle topside first. Just gotta make sure everyone knows who's top of the food chain again." He leaned in close to her and she waited. "Don't you worry though, he hasn't forgotten you." Just a bit more and he'd be near enough for her to take a bite out of that pretty, borrowed face.

But she never got the chance.

The demon crumbled in upon itself, light flashing, not smoke. It didn't escape or get banished back to hell, she saw its soul snuffed out. Meg sat up straighter. Nothing was in the room and even angels had to lay hands on a vessel to crush the possessor. She didn't know what could be lurking about that could exterminate them without even being present.

The heavy door to the room imploded, much the same way the demon did. The dust settled and there was the youngest Winchester standing in the frame, splattered in blood, but no weapon in his hand. No gun with iron rounds or fancy little knife, no ancient book with an incantation that could kill, nothing.

Meg was intrigued, but not surprised, not really. She'd heard what had happened to big brother and that annoyingly endearing angel. Sucked into Purgatory with no door, no eclipse, no way in or out. Meg was smarter than most demons, that was how she'd made it this far. Not with an excess of information, but the right kind.

Sam and Dean Winchester were…unstable without each other, off balance and easy prey. Well, others saw easy prey. She saw what they really were; the mostly harmless animal you track for a guaranteed clean kill, already thinking what you're gonna do with their skin; but then you get it cornered and it turns around to tear you apart. Especially Sam with his…potential. So yeah, interesting, but not surprising that he'd gone looking for power to save big brother. And for Sam, power meant demons, or rather, what was in them.

Then she realized something. For all the dead hell-dweller lining the walls and floors and, if she looked out into the hallway, ceilings, there was not a whiff of demon blood to him. He was completely clean. When she looked in his eyes, expecting the darkness of a demon, she didn't find it. She didn't find any gleam of an angel either, though she didn't expect to. If nothing else could be agreed upon about the Winchesters, one thing was certain: The boys were human.

Meg thought maybe all that romantic drivel had been somehow true; you could just see one's soul through their eyes. 'Cause she'd never noticed how green Sam's eyes were before, but now, now they shined. This was Sam Winchester. This had always been Sam Winchester; deadly calm and unafraid.

Sam had been all alone once before and she'd mostly kept her distance, not let in on the big plans of Azazel and Lilith. Dean had been lost, unreachable and Sam had fallen right into their hands. But Sam had something then, if not the hope of getting his brother back, then getting revenge on his killer. He'd had no clue of his powers back then either, thinking they were up and gone with Azazel. Even if he had been able to reach them at the time, he'd been too gone and drunk on grief to use them.

But this time, there was no real killer, no target for his rage and, she was guessing after wading through a weeks' worth of information and leads, no clear way to save Dean. Sam was driven and desperate without direction.

Except Dean, always Dean. Winchester compasses didn't point north, only to each other.

Meg supposed all that talk of Sammy's potential and exceptional power wasn't complete bull after all. She'd thought the demons that were wary of what he could become were mere cowards. Once, she had detected some note of fear or maybe reverence in Azazel's voice, but blew it off quickly as imagination; Sam was their weapon, after all, why should they fear him? She did know he'd never needed the blood, it had just been a leash. Made him stronger quicker, a more perfect vessel for Lucifer, easier to control. He'd been staggering, lost in grief after Dean had been dragged to the Pit and Ruby had him right where she wanted him.

And now here he was again, one half of a soul cut off from the other. Except this wasn't the naïve hunter destined for Big Things anymore. Sam knew what he wanted, where it was, and that he was going to get there one way or another, bring Dean back.

The Sam that stood before her wasn't the Sam that Ruby had known. Meg wouldn't be like Ruby, leading the stray, boy king around by the nose. Because now she saw what Sam really was as Ruby, as Azazel and Lilith, as _Lucifer_ never had.

Something bright, excited, stirred in her. She felt the absurd urge to fall at Sam's feet, to weep as she only had around Lucifer. Around her promised savior. She hadn't forgotten that the devil had been using her and her kind, maybe she'd even known that all along. But she'd always needed a cause, a reason to exist; and the bigger the goal, the better.

Lucifer's end game; the desolate cities and rolling black clouds, the screams of abandoned humanity pleading for salvation, voices of monsters and the damned, her own kind, joining them and filling the utter silence left in the wake of an empty heaven. The grandeur of it, the _scale_…It made her feel alive. She hadn't even had to think about where her loyalties would lie when the fallen angel had looked at her. She'd have followed him anywhere.

When he'd spoken to her,_"Will you serve me?", _she'd seen the objective, the certainty of his victory and the importance of it, all in his eyes.

Just like she saw now in the eyes of Sam Winchester.

He didn't offer a hand to help her up like the boy she'd met on the road would have seven years ago. He didn't make himself stand taller to cover up that little bit of fear of a demon like he would have four years ago. And he didn't slit her open and drink her dry like he would have three years ago. He just walked over, looked down at her, and scratched through the painted outer line on the floor with his shoe.

"Get up. We're leaving."

Meg grinned, eyes wide upon her new savior. She'd follow him anywhere.

She wondered what Purgatory would be like.


End file.
